Office of Arts & Culture news and events

Art Interruptions 2017: Delridge Greenway and Connector Trail

August 3 – December 31, 2017

Temporary artwork in the Delridge Neighborhood Greenway and Connector Trail

The Office of Arts & Culture, in partnership with the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT), commissioned seven emerging public artists to create temporary art installations within the Delridge Neighborhood Greenway and Delridge Connector Trail for Art Interruptions 2017. The artworks inhabit city sidewalks and parks and offer passers-by a brief interruption in their day, eliciting a moment of surprise, beauty, contemplation or humor. Art Interruptions is funded by the Seattle Department of Transportation 1% for Arts Funds.

Jasmine Brown created a series of images portraying black teenage boys in hoodies, commemorating the fifth anniversary of Trayvon Martin’s death. She created the artworks by first taking photographs of boys doing ordinary things like petting a cat, playing an instrument, reading a book, or talking on a cell phone, and then manipulated the photos using digital techniques to make the images pop. Once completed, her paintings were transferred onto vinyl. Brown’s artworks appear on signal boxes, street furniture, and sites along the Greenway, varying in size between 2 ft x 2 ft portraits to 5 – 6 ft high life-size images.

Wild & Creative WondersSusan Brown

Susan Brown made a sequence of Creative Comedy Dramas – a series of theatrical historic collage characters installed on poles and walls along the Delridge Neighborhood Greenway. Two to four stationary character puppets depicting dancers and musicians are installed at each location. Most of the puppets have human bodies with faces adapted from antique illustrations or recent photographs of animals, including cats, dogs, wild mammals, and mythical creatures, and are dressed in culturally diverse historic costumes. Varying in size between 12 – 18 inches, these multi-color collage figures were created using illustrations found in antique publications and are composed using layers of canvas. Additional features, including stage props, were also made through adaption from photographs.

Hibernacula: BatcallRyan Burns

Ryan Burns’ drive is to understand how society can better understand our relationship with the natural world. This inspired him to create a sculptural bat house that addresses current threats to bats not only in Washington state, but also nationally. Installed next to an open lawn that bats find ideal for hunting, Burns repurposed an old public phone box cover to house a wooden bat box, which is adorned with stenciled objects that reference Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT) and medical imagery. Burns has experience with bats and has observed their timid nature; if threatened, bats react as mice do, by hiding or staying hidden. To ensure the safety and comfort of the bats, Burns worked with the Seattle Parks and Recreation’s ecologist, and the bat box conforms with International Bat Coalition standards. The bat box is mounted independently within the phone box so it can easily be unbolted and relocated to the Bats Northwest’s preserve in Lynnwood at the end of Art Interruptions.

Sea Creature Scavenger HuntMaria Jost

Inspiring people to look more deeply at their surroundings, Maria Jost created an interactive organism scavenger hunt along the Greenway and Connector Trail. She encourages people of all ages, on foot or bicycles, to scan the surroundings for intricately patterned sea creatures placed strategically throughout the area. Using watercolor and digital collage transferred to a vinyl utility box wrap, Jost created a surreal undersea landscape that includes rocks, kelp, and aquatic plants, but is devoid of larger organisms like fish and marine invertebrates. A checklist with silhouetted images and an accompanying website encourages viewers to search for the six missing organisms, which are scattered along the Greenway and Connector Trail and may be found on the back of street signs, on other metal boxes, or in other locations.

Goats of Many ColorsTia Matthies

With the hope of inspiring feelings of surprise, delight, and thoughts of cultures from around the world, Tia Matthies created a small herd of goats. Created from one-inch plywood and varying in size, the five two-dimensional goats resemble cut-out illustrations. The artist painted the goats with exterior house paint in bright colors and designed them to appear as though they are grazing. Matthies hopes to inspire deeper thought on what these goats mean to various populations here in our city and around the world, symbolizing our fascination with small urban farms and expanding feelings of community.

SmeltingAkira Ohiso

Akira Ohiso’s art installation brings attention to the history of the river as a fertile fishery for the Duwamish Native tribe. The shallow banks of Longfellow Creek once supported smelt, but they slowly disappeared with the Industrial Revolution and the subsequent proliferation of chemicals and toxic waste. Ohiso created drawings of native smelt – in red, yellow, black, and blue – that were then digitally printed onto white windsocks to create fish kites. In the artist’s Japanese culture, fish kites (Koinobori) are flown on poles to celebrate an annual national Children’s Day – symbolizing hope for a healthy and prosperous future for children. This year also marks the 75th anniversary of the Japanese-American internment camps, adding poignancy to the installation.

Orange you glad for green? Yes, I pink so.Shawn Parks

Shawn Parks’ inspiration is the surreal horizontal stripes of spring tulip bloom colors in the Skagit Valley. The artist’s concept interrupts the viewer’s experience throughout the Greenway with shocks of brightly colored artwork in shapes and textures resembling pine tree needles, bamboo stalks, grass, and ivy ground covers. Parks created the artworks using materials originally designed for construction and sport use in outdoor environments, including marking whiskers, marking flags, and flagger tapes. The artist ’ worked with a Seattle Department of Transportation arborist to identify the best trees and sites along the Greenway for the installations. These varied sections of bright color appear at multiple heights for viewers to notice – whether traveling on foot, bicycle, or by car – and to bring joy and happiness to passersby.